1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a telephonic console usable in an automatic call distribution system for interconnecting telephonic units of an external network with a plurality of the telephonic consoles and, more particularly, to a telephonic console which is programmable to operate in different modes.
2. Description of the Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 C.F.R. 1.97-1.99
Telephonic consoles of the type having a keyboard and visual display for interfacing with a console microprocessor of the console and with a computer of an automatic distribution system for interconnecting telephonic units of an external network with a plurality of the telephonic consoles are well known. In such call distribution systems there are different types of units that require different operating parameters. These different types of consoles include a service agent console, a supervisory console, a billing console and a station master console.
Each of these different consoles has a different set of relationships between the plurality of individual relatable key switches of the keyboard and the functions performed by the console in response to actuation of the different keys. Also, each different type of console has a different set of relationships between the plurality of individual display elements of the console and a plurality of different conditions of the console and a relationship between actuation of the keys of the keyboard and the response thereto of the individual display elements. Moreover, types of telephonic consoles in such a system also have different sets of capabilities. For instance, while a supervisory console would have the capability of monitoring the voice communications being conducted on one of the agent consoles, an agent console would not have any monitoring capability.
In known systems employing such telephonic consoles, it is necessary to individually construct each of the consoles at the manufacturing facility to function in accordance with one of these different modes of operation. For instance, if a system needs a hundred agent console, two billing agent consoles, and five supervisory consoles, those numbers of the different types of consoles are produced at the production facility and shipped to the user site. If the inventory is short of agent consoles, but has an excess of supervisory consoles, the supervisory consoles cannot be substituted for the agent consoles. Moreover, during installation there are sometimes changes in the design of the system which require less of the different types of agent consoles, but nothing can be done on site to change the consoles to function in different modes of operation to meet the new design requirements.